ABSTRACT
The reader will at once discover that Herbert belongs, like his brother, to that school of poets whose characteristics have been so admirably analysed by Johnson-the Metaphysical or Phantastic School. This singular sect first appeared during the latter years of Elizabeth’s reign. Their origin is popularly ascribed to Dr Donne, though it would in truth be more correct to say that in the poetry of Donne their peculiarities of sentiment and expression are most conspicuously illustrated. They owed their origin, indeed, not to the influence of Donne, but to the spirit of the age. In all eras of great creative energy poetry passes necessarily through two stages: in the first stage, imagination predominates; in the second, reflection. In the first stage, men feel more than they think; in the second, they think more than they feel. If a literature runs its natural course, we may predict with absolute certainty that mere rhetoric will usurp the place of the eloquent language of the passions, that fancy will be substituted for imagination, and that there will cease to be any necessary correspondence between the emotions and the intellect. This stage was not completely attained till the age of Cowley. In the poetry of Donne we find the transition between the two stages marked with singular precision. Some of his poems remind us of the richest and freshest work of the Elizabethan age; in many of them he outCowleys Cowley himself. But his work was not the work, in any sense, of a creator. He contributed no new elements, either to thought or to diction. What he did was unite the vicious peculiarities of others, to indulge habitually in what they indulged in only occasionally. He was not, for example, the first to substitute philosophical reflection for poetic feeling, as his contemporaries, Samuel Daniel, Sir John Davies, and Fulke Greville, were simultaneously
the age, he succeeded in making them popular. It would not, perhaps, be saying too much to say that no single author contributed more to the foundation of the Metaphysical School than Joshua Sylvester, whose translation of Du Bartas preceded the ‘metaphysical’ poems of Donne, and was probably as favourite a work with Donne as it certainly was with most of the young poets of that age. The style of Donne is, however, marked by certain distinctive peculiarities which no intelligent critic would be likely to mistake, and his influence on contemporary poetry was unquestionably considerable. Lord Herbert appears to have been the earliest of his disciples….
